The parameters for the upcoming peace deals, the concessions and capitulations on which they will be wrought are yet unknown. It is not known for example if women will completely be banned from obtaining an education in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa or just limited to a fifth-grade education.

Zakaria, Rafia.  “A Note from Obama: A No from Pakistan.”  Dawn, May 24, 2013.

In the previous post, I played around with an hypothetical concept possibly undergirding the west’s approach to the Islamic Small Wars: “The Least War Possible”.  What is there to greet me when I’ve finished with it?  The above referenced article in Dawn.

Here I’m arguing for managed change, evolutionary adjustment, a slow but least costly working out of many things, and with many things to be observed and discovered as we go, and the news from overseas is telling me that someone’s idea of progress divides over whether ” . . . women will be completely banned from obtaining an education . . . or just limited to a fifth-grade education.”

What would Malala say?

I am not the only one asking the question.

How should the young Malala see the incoming Prime Minister’s reaching out to the Taliban? They are her tormentors but he wants to mend fences with them.

Much of the foreign invasion of Afghanistan was advertised as a measure to liberate the Malalas from the patriarchal country’s hand-reared medieval rulers. Are we looking at a U-turn ahead, on both sides of the Durand Line?

Naqvi, Jawed.  “If Malala were an Indian.”  Deccan Chronicle, May 24, 2013.

In the direction suggested by each article, Prime Minister Sharif’s Pakistan may be heading toward the kind of freedom known to North Koreans, i.e., an isolated state  of affairs best preserves the narcissist’s bubble.

However, as elsewhere among the Muslim-majority states of the world, that bubble has been popped in some places and pressured in others: mining, productivity, and trade remain essential to the world’s economies, and none are so grand or great as to get away with removing themselves from the world altogether.

Perhaps with more assuredly secure dangerous nuclear power sources and fragile alternative energy systems in place, state reliance on deep global economic integration and cooperation may be reduced, giving local to regional cultures greater ability in “sustainable development” (hark ye back to McRobie and Schumacher and Brown).

However, the world will not get there with women held captive in cruelly imposed ignorance.

Associated Reference

Reuters.  “Pakistan should consider IMF deal after reforms in place: Sartaj Aziz.”  May 24, 2013.

# # #